Cruelty was allowed to become 'normal' in the NHS at the time of the Stafford hospital scandal and neither staff nor ministers took any notice, Jeremy Hunt said yesterday.

The Health Secretary promised to overhaul hospitals so they provide the 'safest, most compassionate and most effective' care in the world.

He made a string of formal recommendations to drive up standards in the wake of the Mid Staffordshire scandal, in which hundreds of patients died needlessly and staff were said to have become 'immune' to the sound of pain.

Named: Every patient will have the name of the doctor and nurse responsible for their care written above their bed, as part of measures to hold NHS staff to account

They include:

* Fines for hospitals if they try to cover up mistakes

* Every patient to have an allocated nurse and doctor, with the names posted above their beds

* Hospitals to publish the number of nurses working on each ward

* Doctors and nurses to be suspended or even struck off for not owning up to mistakes

* Doctors and nurses to face up to five years in jail if they wilfully neglect patients

* Failed managers to be blacklisted and barred from getting other jobs in the NHS.

* Hospitals to put up 'how to complain' guides in wards.

Up
to 1,200 patients are feared to have died needlessly at Mid
Staffordshire NHS Trust between 2005 and 2009, yet a damning inquiry by
Sir Robert Francis, QC, at the beginning of this year warned it could
happen again.

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The Government
has since been drawing up a series of recommendations to improve care
across the health service and prevent staff from trying to cover up
their mistakes.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (left) said that cruelty had become the norm in the NHS, and he warned it must never happen again while Labour's shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said the government's words had to be followed by action

Outlining his response to the Francis
report in the Commons yesterday, Mr Hunt said: 'Cruelty became normal in
our NHS and no-one noticed. The inquiry shows the devastating effects
of overly defensive responses – hurting families, suppressing the truth
and preventing lessons being learned.

'The
NHS is a moral being or it is nothing. I do not simply want to prevent
another Mid Staffs, I want our NHS to be a beacon across the world, not
just for equity but its excellence.

'I want it to offer the safest, most compassionate and most effective care available anywhere and I believe it can.'

The
proposals include fining hospitals if they try to cover up mistakes
which cause harm or death. Trusts could be made to pay out tens of
thousands of pounds to the NHS for the most serious errors.

Every patients will also be given the name of a nurse and a consultant who is in charge of their care.

Hospitals
will have to publish the number of nurses working on each ward and be
expected to put up 'how to complain' guides, with step-by-step
instructions for what patients and families should do if they are
unhappy.

Mr Hunt told MPs patients needed to have confidence in the care they would receive from the NHS

The Francis Inquiry into the scandal at Mid Staffordshire heard hundreds of patients died there from 2005 to 2009

They will also have
to publish figures on the number of complaints every three months,
with details of what lessons have been learnt from each one.

Staff
who do not immediately own up to errors would face tougher sanctions
than those who are honest, under proposals. NHS officials are liaising
with watchdogs to see whether honesty could be taken into account in
punishments.

But Julie
Bailey, whose mother Bella died at Stafford Hospital, said she was
'disappointed' that Mr Hunt's proposals did not go far enough. She and
other campaigners wanted new laws protecting whistleblowers from the
sack and a legal obligation for staff to be honest with patients.

Meanwhile,
former Labour health spokesman Diane Abbott admitted her party had made
it more important for nurses to take exams than to care.

She
said: 'For many members of the public, one of the problems with general
standards of care may have been the push under a Labour government for
an all-graduate nursing profession. And there is a view that what that
has led to is elevating taking exams over and above basic levels of
care.'

DESPERATE CALL BY DYING GRANDMOTHER

Alone: Dorothy Simpson, who died at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital

A hospital has apologised after a dying 84-year-old woman was forced to make a desperate call to her family after being abandoned by staff.

Dorothy Simpson died 'frightened and alone' in a ward which resembled a 'ghost town' after doctors and nurses at Royal Bournemouth Hospital failed to come to her aid.

The great-grandmother used her mobile to call son Steve as she struggled to breathe, without a single member of staff on the ward to help her.

Her eldest son Jim rushed to the hospital, arriving 20 minutes later, but found that she had died alone with the bedside monitor alarm still sounding.

Steve Simpson, 63, said the family were 'angry and devastated' at the appalling treatment of their mother.

He said: 'She died alone and frightened because of the hospital's countless failings. If my mother had been given the care she deserved she would still be here today.'

The retired decorator described the ward as a 'ghost town' and said Mrs Simpson, who suffered from a terminal lung disease, was left for a further four hours before a doctor arrived.

The hospital has now admitted to a catalogue of shocking blunders in relation to the death on July 27 and apologised, following an internal inquiry.